Have bought this cam & here's my 3 peso's worth. Firstly, I'm a camera noob so chances are I'm easily satisfied. Secondly, I know the quality of the pics aren't great but as I said, I'm a noob.
I'm not qualified to do a review, so this is just my 3 peso's worth regarding the IS, as there's been some debate as to whether its really any use or not. And any noob (esp one with shaky hands like moi) might find this useful if he's considering the TZ-1.
For those who are wondering if the Mega OIS really work, yes it does. I'm infamous for shaky hands & with mode 2 enabled, I was even able to take a pic at 50x digital with little blurring. When I was viewing the pic in the LCD, anything above 10x was shaking like mad. 50x was like a damn tornado! Was expecting the 50x pic to be super blur, but as you can see from below, it was actually quite ok. At least for my standard
In 5 megapixel mode, max optical zoom is 10x. If you lower to 3mp or less, you can go up till 12.5x optical. Okay, here are the pics. For what its worth, I live on the 9th floor.
First one. 3mp, no zoom used.
3mp, 12.5x optical.
3mp, 20x optical/digital.
3mp, 50x optical/digital.
Must say I'm quite happy with it. The IS worked like a charm, I've got some serious zooming power & its reasonably compact too.